In April The Way of the Kings will be published in German. What’s in store for the reader? What kind of topics do you deal with in the novel, what’s your focus?
One very common story in fantasy, ever since Tolkien, is how the magic is going away. In the Stormlight Archive I wanted to write a story about the magic coming back. According to the mythology of the world, mankind used to live in heaven until a group of evil spirits known as the Voidbringers assaulted and captured it, casting out God and men. Men took root on Roshar, a world of storms, but the Voidbringers chased them there, trying to push them off of Roshar and into Damnation. To help men cope, the Almighty gave them powerful suits of armor and mystical weapons known as Shardblades. Led by ten angelic Heralds and ten orders of knights known as Radiants, men resisted the Voidbringers ten thousand times, finally winning and finding peace. Or so the legends say. Today, the only remnants of those supposed battles are the Shardblades, the possession of which makes a man nearly invincible on the battlefield. The entire world, essentially, is at war with itself—and has been for centuries since the Radiants turned against mankind. Kings strive to win more Shardblades, each secretly wishing to be the one who will finally unite all of mankind under a single throne.
That’s the backstory. The book follows a young spearman forced into the army of a Shardbearer, led to war against an enemy he doesn’t understand and doesn’t really want to fight. It will deal with the truth of what happened deep in mankind’s past. Why did the Radiants turn against mankind, and what happened to the magic they used to wield?
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